


I got a river for a soul

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, Harry Styles Loves Louis Tomlinson, M/M, Touring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-14 12:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4564257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tiny little headcanons about life on the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The day Louis is heading to the studio to record, Harry doesn’t say anything. He watches the way Louis tugs his sleeves down over his hands repeatedly, and the way his knee bounces as he eats his cereal. Harry just potters in the kitchen, barefoot, the early morning Los Angeles sun spilling across the countertops. Harry pours tea into a travel mug, and finds Louis’ keys where he flung them on the bookcase when he came in the night before. He doesn’t mention the dark circles under Louis’ eyes that give away how little he slept. He ruffles his hair, and presses a kiss to the top of his head, and tells him the driver is waiting outside.

He doesn’t tell him there’s no need to be nervous. He definitely doesn’t wish him luck.

But he can’t stop thinking about Louis all day, is the thing. He finds himself pulling all the books off the shelves and putting them back ordered by colour. He FaceTimes his mother. He thinks about making something elaborate for dinner, that will take time and provide a distraction. But he just winds up with post-its stuck to twenty different pages in his new Ottolenghi, and gives up, deciding they’ll just grill the steaks he bought yesterday. He snoops the Dropbox where Julian is sharing rough cuts of the tracks. But it’s all yesterday’s work with Niall. Nothing from today.

He checks his phone. Repeatedly.

Eventually he gives up and goes and lies on a chaise in the sun.

He’s woken with a cold wet kiss to the forehead and scrape of Louis’s unshaven face nuzzling into his neck. He holds out a Corona, condensating in the dry afternoon heat. and Harry takes a grateful swig.

Louis fits himself alongside him on the lounger, one of his legs tangled over Harry’s.

Harry doesn’t ask.

They watch the sunlight bouncing off the water in the pool, and finish the beer in silence, passing it between them.

“I thought we’d have the steaks for dinner. I made a salad.”

“Make me chips and you’ve got a deal.” Louis swings up to a sitting position, toeing out of his shoes. Harry drinks in the sight of him, relaxed and happy, no trace of the tension that had knotted his spine that morning. He holds out his hand, making Louis tug on his arm and haul him up to standing.

He doesn’t let go, twining their fingers together as they walk back into the house.

Louis is humming “nobody, nobody” under his breath. Harry can’t help but smile.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a crowd outside, and so the team wants them to exit the hotel through an adjoining mall. It’s after hours, but security are going to open it up to let them cut through to the waiting cars.

Harry doesn’t think about it until he’s being led past the closed stores and down a stationary escalator. It’s been years since he’s been in a mall.

The place is eerie; empty. The shops closed up and dark, and some weird muzak version of maybe Chris Isaak playing tinnily over the speakers punctuated by the slap of their heels on the linoleum. It feels like a scene out of a zombie movie. Something post-apocalyptic and dark.

He’s not sure he’d realised, that he wouldn’t get to go to a mall ever again. He can’t decide if it matters, but it’s gnawing at him.

They turn at a staircase, and pause while Alberto mutters into his phone, checking that the cars are ready and they’re good to go.

Harry can’t work out why he’s anxious. He doesn’t _need_ to go to a mall. Anything he needs can come to him. But it doesn’t feel right, all of a sudden. It doesn’t feel enough.

Louis tugs at his sleeve to get his attention, giving him a questioning look. “You okay?”

Harry can’t find the words to explain his confusion, so he opts for something more banal. “What would you buy here if the stores were open?”

Louis is never fazed by Harry’s non-sequiturs. His head swivels around immediately looking at the floors of shops above them. Harry just stares at the line of his jaw. Has to clench his fists a little to stop himself from reaching for him with grabby hands.

“That telescope,” Louis says, pointing at a NatGeo store to their left. And somehow it’s exactly the right answer. Because only Harry knows the way Louis is slightly obsessed with space. The times he’s dragged the others outside to watch the ISS pass overhead (“There are _people_ up there, Haz. Wave, for fuck’s sake”). Three nights ago, in Melbourne, when he made Harry sneak up to the roof terrace of their hotel to lie on the sun loungers in the dark and watch Venus conjuncting with Jupiter.

There’s a whole universe out there, right above them. Dark, and expansive, and full of wonder. And there’s a boy right here beside him, with his hand pressing warmly against Harry’s spine, his eyes dancing.

Harry doesn’t need to go to a mall.


	3. Chapter 3

Louis agrees to the pap walk at LAX on the condition that the car takes him straight to Van Nuys and the plane to New York is ready to take off. He tugs his hood up and doesn’t even pretend to smile. 85 days to go.

He feels grimy. The direct flight from London is the longest he takes, and even though the Air New Zealand beds are his favourites, with their squashy little mattresses and proper pillows, he didn’t sleep. Louis’ never slept well on planes, always marveling at Harry's ability to fold himself into impossible spaces. Long limbs akimbo, mouth dropping open with tiny little snores. 

Harry. Who got to take the short flight straight to New York. 

He facetimes him from the car as it pulls away from the curb, leaving the last of the flashbulbs in their wake. 

“How was it?”

Louis shrugs, tugs at hangnail with his teeth. “Means to an end, right.” It’s a hollow answer. Words they’ve said to each other too often and for too long. 

Harry's face is etched with concern. 

Louis smiles; tries to get him to relax. Makes Harry tell him about his trip, because he knows the story will be rambling and irrelevant but he just wants to sink into the leather seats and listen to his voice. This whole plan is stupid and risky and like something straight out of a telenovela, but it doesn't matter because they're so close now. 

Five years down, 85 days to go. 

Private plane or no, they still make Louis turn his phone off when they begin to taxi, and so he touches the pad of his thumb to Harry's face on the screen. The substitute kiss they can finally leave behind soon but probably never will. 

He asks the hostess for a beer, and picks listlessly at a sandwich as they hurtle across the night sky. 

So many miles in the air. So many hours wasted apart. Louis feels scratchy and impatient. Like he does before he runs onto the field for a game. Like it's time to go. Like he's tired of waiting. 

Harry found the New York apartment and insisted Louis go and look before they signed off the paperwork a few months back. Just as this whole circus was starting. Louis was allowed to make the detour only if he went out and got photographed, which was annoying, because he was exhausted. But so, so worth it when the agent unlocked the front door and clicked on the lights, and Louis’ breath caught in his throat.

New York is somewhere they've both always wanted to live. Now the town car is sweeping over the bridge and the lights of Manhattan are lit up like a fairytale.

It’s a city with the most perfect and the most awful of their memories tied up in it, woven through its streets. He thinks about Madison Square Garden. He thinks about drinking in the new year by himself until he passed out, refusing to google the pictures, unable to look. He thinks about Central Park and the slightly strangled noise the fans made as the interviewer said, “ _From one father…_ ”. He thinks about the way Harry once pressed him up against a wall in the bathrooms at Soho House, biting at his earlobe. He thinks about the way his Mum had tears in her eyes before that first concert, unable to say anything but, “ _My baby_ ,” over and over. It’s a city that’s always reinventing itself right around him.

Means to an end. 

Parking garage. Lift. _Almost there_ , he thinks. Almost home. 

He unlocks the door. The lights are dimmed. He takes in the expanse of dark hardwood floors and his boy lying flat on his stomach in front of the couch. Surrounded by an abandoned copy of Monocle, two empty coffee cups and and forty pages of sheet music. He has his headphones in and doesn't hear Louis, so he has a moment to just take it in. Harry’s feet are bare. The t-shirt he’s wearing is an old, stretched out one of Louis’. His hair is up in a bun and seems to be secured with a pencil. Louis’ not sure he’s ever looked more beautiful.

But then he thinks that every time.

If Harry’s on the floor his back is troubling him, so Louis drops his duffle in the entryway and walks to the kitchen, throwing a wheat bag in the microwave as he toes off his shoes. Even up this high, the dull noise of the city is like a physical presence. Sirens; the honk of taxis. So much louder and more vibrant than any of their other homes.

Louis kneels and presses the heat pack to Harry's lower back, and he twists his head around with a start, tugging out his earbuds. A delighted smile spreads across his face. 

“You’re early!” he says accusingly, and Louis shrugs, sprawling out alongside him and resting on his elbows as he leans in for a kiss. Harry tastes like coffee, and chewing gum, and he smells like clean laundry and day-old cologne. 

“I was planning to be all ready,” he pouts.

“By ready, do you mean naked?” Louis teases, running his hand down the plane of Harry’s spine and adjusting the heat pack. Harry groans appreciatively. “Because I’m not sure your old man back could take it.”

Harry huffs indignantly, but doesn’t disagree. “We have five days, and absolutely no need to leave this apartment. There’s probably no hurry.”

“You’ll go to Toronto from here?” he asks, tracing his fingers along the bars of music scrawled in Harry’s distinctive style. Tapping a pattern against the wood of the floor.

“Yeah. Are they going to make you fly back through LA?”

“Nah. They’re just going to leak that’s where I’m flying from.”

“So, no one needs us until Thursday?”

They smile at each other, tangling their fingers together, as if neither of them can quite believe their luck.

Louis gets to his feet. “I’m going to go shower all this plane off me. Think your decrepit muscles could handle that?” 

Harry rolls his eyes, and reaches out a hand for Louis to pull him up.

It’s a little after midnight, according to the bedside clock. Louis starts the shower and thinks, _84 days to go_.


	4. Chapter 4

Louis doesn’t usually pack. He’s the one who tornadoes through a hotel suite as soon as they arrive, leaving a trail of hoodies and shoes in his wake, emptying every single item out of his toilet bag all over the benchtop in the bathroom just to find an aspirin. Harry is the one who double checks the wall sockets for their chargers when they’re checking out and retrieves Louis’ lost beanie from under an armchair. Harry is the one who packs.

But here he is, tension radiating off him in waves, throwing things into Harry’s hold-all like it’s personally offended him.

The doors to the balcony are open, and the warm night is making the room feel muggy and airless. 

“I hate it here. It’s too fucking hot.”

Harry refrains from saying that if he closed the doors and put the aircon on, that wouldn’t be a problem.

He knows it’s not the problem.

Harry sinks into the armchair and rests his elbows on his knees and waits.

Louis storms into the bathroom and Harry hears him sweep an arm across the counter, and he lets out a sigh. That’s just going to mean Louis won’t be able to find his contact lens solution when they land in Jakarta because it will be junked in with cologne and hair wax and Harry is the one that always makes sure it’s in the outside pocket. 

He doesn’t intervene.

Louis emerges and throws the toilet bag into his suitcase where it lands with a dull thud.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nothing to fucking talk about, is there. It’s done.” Louis looks around with a scowl for something else to stuff in his bag, but the room is now just a mess of tangled sheets and damp towels, and so he thrusts his hand in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes and walks out to the balcony.

Harry follows him, leaning on the rail beside him, as the smoke leaves Louis’ lungs and curls out into the night.

“He promised,” Louis manages, finally. His voice jagged; sharp with hurt. “He said he’d stick it out to the end of the tour.”

And Harry knows, is the thing. He knows that’s the least of it. His forearm rests on the rail beside Louis’, as close as they can be without touching. Close enough that Harry can still feel the heat of his skin causing all the fine hairs on his arm to stand up.

He lights a second cigarette from the butt of the first.

Harry takes a deep breath. “It’s…”

“Don’t,” Louis cuts him off. “Don’t say it’s going to be okay, or it’s his choice or...or whatever bullshit platitude. Because I’ve heard them all today. I don’t need them from you.”

There’s no venom in his words. He’s just tired. They all are.

“He promised, Harry. He said he’d be there for every bullshit club trip. That he’d see me through the girls and the promo and the...” he trails off, unable to finish the thought, his tone thick with distaste.

And Harry knows this. Knows it will happen anyway; that they’ve lined up acquaintances from home more than happy to join the tour with a mandate to take Louis partying. But it won’t be the same. It won’t be the way it was supposed to be, with Zayn like a brother at his side. Always having Louis’ back.

“He knows how long we’ve waited for this,” Louis manages, his voice small. “How much we’ve given up.”

 _They made him change his name_ , Harry thinks, but doesn’t say. They all have their war wounds. It’s not a competition. He wraps his arms around Louis then, engulfing him from the side and burying his face in his hair. He presses a soft kiss to his temple. Louis’ breath hitches and he turns in Harry’s arms and presses his face to his chest. 

He holds his boy tighter as his shoulders shake, and his tears damp the fabric of Harry’s shirt. Louis is the most loyal person he’s ever met; always freshly heartbroken when he learns not everyone is the same way. Harry can’t hold it against Zayn, though. Everyone has their limits.

Harry and Louis just haven’t yet reached theirs, because they have each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr, come say hi: [helenahjay](http://helenahjay.tumblr.com/)


End file.
